cosmicrat’s Techdirt Comments

Re: Not the Way It Works

"1. The government completely fails at something.
2. This complete failure is touted as an obvious reason to expand the scope of the government in that area. (See: Banking Regulation)"

Actually that's a pretty bad distortion of how the government failed at banking regulation. It really went more like this:

1. Starting with Carter, and ramping up massively under Reagan, the government agencies regulating banking practices were dissolved, defunded and generally eliminated.
2. In the absence of meaningful oversight, the big banks get away with murder, destroying the economy in the process.
3. Sane people (many of whom warned about this decades ago) renew calls for government regulation of speculative banking to be restored to appropriate levels.

A question

What exactly do you mean by "digital health care startups"? Does it refer to health care for the fingers? Or perhaps we are considering health care provided by droids and computers a la Star Wars and Star Trek?

Don't want to get fooled again

While I support technology growth in general and believe the law and government support could be tweaked a bit to help startups, I am very leary of the implications of some of your suggestions. Specifically in education, the interest of venture capitalists in exploiting the education market all to often harms students and the school system in general. The public school system is being gutted of its tax funding as that money is diverted to for profit private schools that offer in the end less educational quality than their public counterparts (while using unfair comparisons to make themselves seem better). And teachers lose living wage, union jobs with health insurance to be replaced by near minimum wage slaves without benefits. Entrepreneurial exploitation of the education market is as much a danger as an opportunity.

This was intentional

Most movies/TV shows etc. assiduously get "clearance" on any recognizable brand name before including it in the film, but this isn't because they strictly speaking have to -it's just cheaper than fighting potential civil suits later. The pressure to pre-clear absolutely everything comes down strong from the corporate offices onto the director and crew, such that it is practically impossible for us to use uncleared brands in the production. The fact they included these brands in this movie without clearance shows they cared about authenticity and resonating with viewers. It is certainly a calculated decision on their part. And I applaud them for it.

Time to start making it an issue.

Well, long past time actually. Assuming we defeat the menace of Darth Romney (yeah, see previous post), one way to apply pressure is the next Democratic presidential primary. Biden will be the presumptive nominee, but what if he got some serious competition from a challenger who was strong on civil liberties? If we can get more people in congress agitating about his as well we might see real progress.

In 4 years...

Assuming we defeat the menace of Darth Romney, Biden will be the presidential nominee in 4 short years. We need to keep hammering this administration hard to get them to ease up on the copyright/patent maximalism. Make it a campaign issue. I wouldn't hope for them to join EFF and condemn the MPAA, but a position of moderacy might be achievable.

At least he's showing a little moderation

I kind of skimmed the article quickly so maybe I missed the comments you are referencing, but it seems like he makes some points in our favor: he admits SOPA/PIPA were flawed and attempted to be snuck through, he opines that copyright terms are too long, and comes out against sueing individual end users for infringement. Doesn't go far enough for me it at least it's progress.

Distribution solution?

I've always felt that BitTorrent or something like it could be useful to commercial distributors (like Netflix and Hulu) to reduce their bandwidth costs. The problem of course is how do they introduce DRM into the equation.

Back to business as usual

Misinformation like this used to make my head spin with its shear Orwellian, surrealistic disconnect from reality. But now, sadly, I have come to expect it from the likes of the **AAs. Didn't Dodd come out a few months ago acting a bit concillatory and promise to engage the forces of reason in honest dialogue? I guess they shitcanned that idea and back to newspeak as usual.

"Movies and Television production happens in all 50 states"

This is factually correct, but it bears mentioning that a lot more production happens in those states that pay kickbacks (incentive programs) to the studios. Basically these multi-billion dollar corporations induce the states to compete with each other as to which can offer the highest bribes in exchange for production activity.

Ebenezer would be proud

Only a true Scrooge would value profit over a child's quality of life like this. Apple and Google disgrace themselves by suppressing the app. Assuming the patent infringement is proved, still in this case I would say it is more moral to break the law than to obey it.

Ebenezer would be proud

Only a true Scrooge would value profit over a child's quality of life like this. Apple and Google disgrace themselves by suppressing the app. Assuming the patent infringement is proved, still in this case I would say it is more moral to break the law than to obey it.

I'm a media professional too!

I work for one of those major media companies making movies for your enjoyment. I am union, and while by no means wealthy, have a family wage job with health insurance. My bosses higher up in the corporation replace their fancy cars every 4 years because they are wealthy, because their company has been making record profits this last decade, this in spite of piracy. This at the same time as they try to screw us in contract negotiations, actually proposing a wage freeze and rolling back benefits.

Not making a good living selling your media? That's because you are not part of the 1%. There is plenty of profit being made. As for me I hope my corporate masters pull their heads out of their asses, realize obscenely profitable DVD sales are not ever coming back, and start making their (our) products available for download/streaming in all markets at reasonable price points so his industry can move into the 21st century!